Resettlement

The Supreme Court this week ended the quest of five exonerated Guantanamo detainees who are seeking release in the United States. The defeat for the Uighurs, members of a Muslim minority group in China, shouldn't be the end of the story. The problem is that other paths to settling them here are strewn with obstacles. The Uighurs' story is a poignant one: They had traveled to Afghanistan, where they joined training camps run by a Uighur separatist group. After the United States launched a military offensive in Afghanistan, they fled to Pakistan, where they were swept up by Pakistani and other coalition forces and brought to the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

WASHINGTON - Two years into a civil war that shows no signs of ending, the Obama administration is considering resettling refugees who have fled Syria, part of an international effort that could bring thousands of Syrians to American cities and towns. A resettlement plan under discussion in Washington and other capitals is aimed at relieving pressure on Middle Eastern countries straining to support 1.6 million refugees, as well as assisting hard-hit Syrian families. The State Department is "ready to consider the idea," an official from the department said, if the administration receives a formal request from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, which is the usual procedure.

Dozens of Sri Lankan asylum seekers on Wednesday left an Australian customs vessel anchored off Indonesia after they were promised they would be resettled, ending a monthlong standoff. The 46 men, five women and five children were taken from Australia's Oceanic Viking to a detention center on nearby Bintan island off Sumatra, said Sugiyo, the center's head. They joined 22 others who disembarked last week. The Oceanic Viking rescued the Sri Lankans last month from a boat with a broken engine as it drifted in international waters near Indonesia.

RAHAT, Israel - On a patch of agricultural land outside Israel's only officially recognized Bedouin city, workers are laying concrete for what the government says will be a cornerstone of its policy to lure impoverished Arabs from barren Negev desert terrain to approved Israeli towns. Upon completion, Idan Hanegev is designed to be Israel's largest industrial park, an 860-acre site with 130 factories employing thousands of Bedouins, a once-nomadic people who have lived in the Negev and other parts of the region since long before the nation of Israel was established.

Despite assurances that black families would no longer be uprooted from their communities and forced under apartheid to move elsewhere, the South African government said Thursday that it resettled more than 64,000 blacks last year and that 22,000 more are about to be moved. J.

When the big white government trucks pulled into the squatter settlement at Varkfontein farm, residents were already pulling apart their shacks of plywood, tin, plastic sheeting and scrap lumber, ready to move in a voluntary--and unusual--resettlement of black squatters in South Africa. "This place is very dirty and unhealthy," Christina Tsolo said, watching as her neighbors began loading their clothes, furniture and other possessions onto the trucks along with the "makings" of their shanties.

The alarm clock's 3 a.m. ring awakened Rudra Kuikel and his eldest daughter, Thagi, in their lightly furnished south Philadelphia apartment. An hour later, they were headed to a packaged-food plant where father and daughter chopped lettuce for eight hours, netting $50 each after taxes and paying $5 each for transportation. The Kuikel family, ethnic Nepalese Hindus who once lived in Bhutan, includes wife Jasodha; son Indra, 19; daughter Tulasha, 13; Thagi, 22; and Rudra, 51. The family fled Bhutan in 1992 after new citizenship laws made it impossible for them to stay in the nation of 691,000 citizens, which straddles India's border with China.

WASHINGTON - Two years into a civil war that shows no signs of ending, the Obama administration is considering resettling refugees who have fled Syria, part of an international effort that could bring thousands of Syrians to American cities and towns. A resettlement plan under discussion in Washington and other capitals is aimed at relieving pressure on Middle Eastern countries straining to support 1.6 million refugees, as well as assisting hard-hit Syrian families. The State Department is "ready to consider the idea," an official from the department said, if the administration receives a formal request from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Refugees, which is the usual procedure.

U.S. officials will stop interviewing Cambodian refugees next month for resettlement in America, a Western diplomatic source said in Bangkok, Thailand. Such a move would virtually halt the flow of the refugees to the United States. The United States has absorbed more than 340,000 Indochinese refugees since the Communist takeover of the region in 1975.

Police detained and questioned two Southern California women working in a Salvadoran resettlement camp and then turned them over to the American Embassy, officials said today. An Episcopal minister, the Rev. Donald Lewis of San Marino, Calif., identified the two as Kathleene Hoy and Mary Parmenter of Pasadena. He said their detention was a part of increased harassment of lay U.S. church workers by Salvadoran authorities in recent months.

In a conventional war, enemy soldiers can be captured and held as prisoners of war until the end of combat. In the criminal justice system, an arrest for a violent crime will lead to a charge, followed by a guilty plea or jury trial. But some individuals imprisoned in the war on terror declared after the 9/11 attacks face the worst of both worlds: detention without trial but without the consolation that they will be freed and returned to their families in a tolerable period of time. Someone who lived in that twilight world for a decade was Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, a Yemeni who was captured near the Afghanistan-Pakistan border in 2001 and held at Guantanamo Bay on suspicion of involvement with Al Qaeda or other enemy forces.

Maliya Suo is more than 90 years old, but she can still skin a squirrel. In her prime, she could shoot a pheasant in flight. She was once the greatest reindeer herder in her tribe. In her old age, Suo is taking on an even tougher adversary: the Chinese government. A member of the nomadic Ewenki community that lives primarily in China's Inner Mongolia region, Suo has resisted the government's effort to resettle her in the world of buildings, money and cars. In 2003, Suo and 2,000 fellow tribe members were forcibly relocated from their encampment to a "resettlement site" 120 miles away, on the outskirts of Genhe, a dilapidated riverside city.

The Supreme Court this week ended the quest of five exonerated Guantanamo detainees who are seeking release in the United States. The defeat for the Uighurs, members of a Muslim minority group in China, shouldn't be the end of the story. The problem is that other paths to settling them here are strewn with obstacles. The Uighurs' story is a poignant one: They had traveled to Afghanistan, where they joined training camps run by a Uighur separatist group. After the United States launched a military offensive in Afghanistan, they fled to Pakistan, where they were swept up by Pakistani and other coalition forces and brought to the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

It's a high compliment when someone seeks to live in a country that imprisoned and abused him. That's what five Chinese Muslims held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility want to do, but they're encountering resistance from the Justice Department. It is urging the Supreme Court not to review an appeals court decision holding that a judge may not release them into this country. The Muslims, members of an ethnic group called the Uighurs who want independence from China, had traveled to Afghanistan, where Uighur military training camps had been set up. After the United States launched a military offensive in Afghanistan, they and others were captured by Pakistani and other coalition forces and brought to Guantanamo.

The new face of U.S. aid to Colombia is not a Black Hawk helicopter or a Green Beret trainer but a smiling 77-year-old peasant clutching the deed to a five-acre farm. This month, Alfonso Mejia received title to the land he had been forced to flee in 2000 by members of a right-wing paramilitary group, just before they massacred 11 of his neighbors. Mejia and hundreds of other residents expelled from their plots in the northern state of Bolivar were pawns in a struggle among armed groups of various political stripes vying for drug trafficking routes, local influence and land.

Recognizing that the United States is failing thousands of refugees fleeing war-torn countries, the Obama administration is conducting the first thorough review of the refugee resettlement system in 30 years and plans to announce major reforms this summer. Officials say the system is outdated and lacks adequate resources to help refugees find jobs and support themselves before exhausting their benefits. That task has been made more difficult by the recession and high unemployment.

Recognizing that the United States is failing thousands of refugees fleeing war-torn countries, the Obama administration is conducting the first thorough review of the refugee resettlement system in 30 years and plans to announce major reforms this summer. Officials say the system is outdated and lacks adequate resources to help refugees find jobs and support themselves before exhausting their benefits. That task has been made more difficult by the recession and high unemployment.

Singapore sent its last 99 Vietnamese migrants home Thursday as part of a U.N. program to shut its refugee camps in Southeast Asia. A Vietnam Airlines Airbus carrying 80 adults and 19 children took off from Changi airport for Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. About 50 police waited nearby during boarding. Singapore and U.N. officials told reporters that the migrants were returning to their homeland voluntarily.

The alarm clock's 3 a.m. ring awakened Rudra Kuikel and his eldest daughter, Thagi, in their lightly furnished south Philadelphia apartment. An hour later, they were headed to a packaged-food plant where father and daughter chopped lettuce for eight hours, netting $50 each after taxes and paying $5 each for transportation. The Kuikel family, ethnic Nepalese Hindus who once lived in Bhutan, includes wife Jasodha; son Indra, 19; daughter Tulasha, 13; Thagi, 22; and Rudra, 51. The family fled Bhutan in 1992 after new citizenship laws made it impossible for them to stay in the nation of 691,000 citizens, which straddles India's border with China.

The bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, one of Shiite Islam's holiest shrines, ushered in one of the bloodiest episodes of the Iraq war. After its gilded dome was ripped open to the sky, sectarian strife exploded. The day after the bombing in February 2006, dozens of Sunni mosques were attacked, many people were killed and a period of massive displacement began. Millions of Iraqis fled to Syria and Jordan if they could, or relocated within Iraq if they could not. Today, almost four years later, the International Rescue Committee estimates that there are still between 1 million and 2 million Iraqi refugees outside the country and another 2 million displaced people inside.